“Follow after love and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (1 Cor. 14:1).
Whether you know it or not, as a Spirit-filled believer, you are inherently prophetic. Inherent is defined as “belonging to the basic nature of someone or something.” In essence, your gift was given to you by God to bless others.
The gift of prophecy is quite literally embedded within your genes on a deep, spiritual level. It belongs to you, resides in you, and should flow from you organically and supernaturally. When you walk in continued ignorance of the gift at your disposal, stagnation and alienation of your God-given prophetic process occurs.
How to Activate and Exercise Your Prophetic Muscle
Prophetically speaking on the Lord’s behalf is not only germane to the prophet, but it is a divine right given by God to every believer. If you are around prophets or prophetic people long enough, prophecy will rub off on you! If you’re too close to it, you will catch it. I have found that prophecy is contagious and easily passed to others. Everyone has a spot inside them just waiting for the prophetic to completely fill it. A seer seed in all of us germinates once watered by prophetic activity.
In order to move your prophetic genes, they need to be activated and exercised. You can do this through prophetic activation, which is simply a stirring up of the gift that already dwells within you. I liken it to strengthening the human muscles through resistance training. The more resistance placed upon a specific muscle area over time, the stronger and more developed it becomes. Your gift of prophecy will respond in the same manner. The more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.
Activations are paramount to this process. Not only do they increase the capacity of your gift, but they also help increase the intensity of your gift. Activations assist in not having to rely on someone else to hear God for you. It augments your innate ability to hear Him for yourself. These activations can cause your spiritual ears to tune into the Lord’s frequency and access your inherently prophetic nature.
I’ve seen many people who were not necessarily prophetic but who became prophetic through activation exercises. Not only does an activation ignite the prophetic gift in them, but the subsequent shaking causes other gifts around it to be stirred up as well. After one such activation, one woman told me her hands felt hot. I discerned that this was a sign of the gift of healing and told her so. Later, she began operating in the gift of healing. This type of thing has happened in nearly every activation that I’ve ever done. Many wonderful testimonies of prophetic awakenings have resulted from these prophetic activations.
Anything You Don’t Exercise Weakens Over Time
During one of these activation sessions, I had a revelation. As I laid hands on a woman to activate her prophetic gift, I saw three gifts inside of her, each varied in size. They actually looked like gift-wrapped presents, bows and all. One gift was bigger than all the others, which seemed to be her dominant gift. I believe that everyone has a few gifts, but usually one is primary or bigger than the others. For example, I discerned a prophetic gift as the largest of her gifts. The other gifts, such as healing, faith, and discernment were relatively small, often due to infrequent or even no use. Again, this is very similar to the human muscle. Through consistent, prolonged neglect, muscle atrophies or shrinks. The smaller it gets from a lack of activity, the weaker the muscle becomes. Your God-given gifts operate in much the same manner. The less you use them, the smaller or weaker they become. The gifts the Lord gives you never go away, according to Romans 11:29.
“For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.”
The Lord will not give you something and then demand it back. However, gifts might decrease in strength if they are not used. Anything you don’t exercise weakens over time. Your heaven-sent abilities are a key to someone’s breakthrough. Many are waiting for them to manifest in you. You might not be called to everyone, but you are called to someone.
Feeding Your Spiritual Gifts
My advice to emerging prophets and prophetic people is to use your prophetic gift as much as possible. The more you use it, the more robust it becomes. Think about it. The longer you do anything, the better you become at it. When your gift is stretched, it strengthens! When it’s pushed or pulled upon regularly, it increases in depth. The weight of your gift becomes heavier, and the gift is now characterized by fatness from being consistently fed over time.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (Isa. 10:27, KJV). The context of this verse includes the ox becoming so fat (anointed) that the yoke breaks. Similar to “eating” the Word of God, you feed your gift every time you use it. When you routinely neglect daily Scripture reading, you might find yourself becoming spiritually weak.
In Matthew 4:4, Jesus told the devil that “But He answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.'” The Bible is the living Word of God, and you need to eat of it daily in order to provide sustenance, making you fatter in the spirit. Fatness equates to weightiness, which is a positive thing spiritually. Likewise, if you go a week without food, you will feel worn out, depleted and lethargic. You must be nourished both physically and spiritually in order to maintain a synergistic level between the spiritual and natural aspects of your prophetic gift. {eoa}
Dr. John Veal is the senior pastor/prophet of Enduring Faith Christian Center and the CEO of John Veal Ministries. He is passionate about pursuing God’s mandate to preach, teach, impart, and activate people within the prophetic. He has traveled the nations, presenting a myriad of prophetic training and ministry. Dr. Veal is the author of Supernaturally Prophetic: A Practical Guide for Prophets and Prophetic People. Dr. Veal is also a teacher with Chicago Public Schools. He currently resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Elisa, and their three children.
This article originally appeared at elijahlist.com.
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